


Pretty Lucky

by endemictoearth



Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Genre: F/M, Father's Day, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-16 02:29:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7248466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endemictoearth/pseuds/endemictoearth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rae's relationship with Father's Day and her father figures over the years. With some cuteness at the end . . .</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pretty Lucky

_“He left when I was really little.”_

Father’s Day used to be an occasion marked by Rae staying in bed all day, marinating in sadness in her toothpaste dressing gown, only coming out to drag sweets and crisps back to her self-imposed pity lair. She didn’t come right out and say, “This day sucks because my prick of a dad sucks,” but Linda got the message and would leave her to it. There were 364 days to nag her daughter; Father’s Day was a free pass to wallow.

The first Father’s Day that Karim is part of the picture, Rae doesn’t do anything special. Doesn’t get him a card, doesn’t make him an slightly rubbery omelette with too much salt and pepper for breakfast, doesn’t take out the rubbish instead of him having to do it. But she does get dressed. She does come downstairs. She does play with Jazz while Karim and Linda sit on the back steps drinking tea. And then, she goes over to Finn’s house for supper and lets his dad talk about Dire Straits and Status Quo for half the meal while she and Finn share knowing smiles.

She doesn’t even think about it, or even notice that she’d foregone her traditional lie-in. And, more surprisingly, she doesn’t think much at all about her own dad.

*

_“I guess I’m pretty lucky, in a way, because I never got to know him.”_

The next year, Rae actually suggests a barbecue in their backyard, with Finn and his dad, and her almost-looks-like-a-real-family family. She makes cards for both Karim and Finn’s dad, and isn’t self-conscious when they both give her big hugs, Karim first, then John.

She doesn’t consciously feel it, but that pervasive montage of sledging down the stairs that’s played on a loop somewhere in her brain for years on end, Chloe’s dad stepping over her to pick up his own daughter, gets a little dimmer. And fresh memories of another water fight in the backyard: the stream from the hose sparkling in the sunlight, Karim tipping a bucket onto Linda from the second floor window, Finn’s shaking droplets from his overlong fringe like a shaggy dog, Jazz squealing with laughter at it all … well, they don’t replace the old but perhaps shuffle them further back, to a place more inaccessible.

*

_“I’m not angry about it. I don’t even think about him.”_

Rae shifts in her seat, looking down at her plate. She’s taken a bite or two of her pasta, but this is even more excruciating than she thought it would be.

Her dad called her mum a few weeks ago, and Linda hadn’t given him Rae’s number, but instead asked what Rae wanted her to do. Rae sighed, and asked for Victor’s number, and said she’d give him a call.

After a back and forth about when worked best, they arrived on the Saturday before Father’s Day. Rae didn’t realize it until she hung up the phone and turned to the calendar hung on the side of the fridge to scribble a reminder. She bit her lip and shrugged.

Back in the restaurant, Rae flicks her eyes up to look across the table at her dad. His expression, equal parts discomfort and nonchalance, shows how desperate he is to make this seem normal, but even he can’t forget how little time he’s spent with her over the years. How not normal this is. He takes a swig of wine from his glass and she shifts again, trying to find a way to align her body that doesn’t make her feel like leaping up and screaming at him. Her fingers twist around the napkin in her lap, and the next moment Finn’s hand is on hers, clasping hers to his, their palms flush together. She looks over to him with a grateful smile. He gets it; he knows all he can do is hold her hand, be there with her, for her, while she faces this.

And the next day, round at his dad’s, she feels relaxed and easy as she twists around Finn in the kitchen, making a Pimm’s cup for John. She’s happy to have had the uncomfortable dinner the night before, because she can so clearly mark the difference from yesterday to today. She’s gone from having no dad to having two, arguably three, as she thinks of Kester. She smiles to herself.

*

_“I guess I just feel like I missed out on something. I felt sad about that. I still feel sad about that.”_

Rae finds that as she gets older, she has more than one Father’s Day a year. She’s lucky to be able to spend as many of the calendar holidays with Karim and John as she can, but there are inevitably those days where her past and her youth and her memories crowd in on her mind, and she remembers the feel of that palpable absence. That place where Victor could have been, and possibly should have been. He’s like a paper doll, carefully cut out along the dotted lines, but one she never got to play with. He got lost, or ripped, and every time she turned to that page in her mind, there he … wasn’t. There was where he had never been.

*

_“He doesn’t deserve to know you, Rae.”_

Karim raises a glass of sparking cider. “Today … we celebrate my beautiful Rae and her university degree! So proud!”

Rae gives him a bashful smile and rolls her eyes. “I haven’t got it yet! But I did pass my toughest exam, so … I’ll drink to that.” She takes a swig of her lager. “And I’ll drink to you … and you!” She raises her pint glass first to Karim and then to John. “Happy Father’s Day to you both—the best guys I know!”

“Oi!” Finn yelps in mock outrage.

“Oh, sorry, apart from _this_ best guy, then!” Everyone laughs and she tries to take another sip of her drink, but Finn is playfully digging his fingers into her side and her glass sloshes as she squirms against his attempts to tickle her. She’s so busy laughing that she doesn’t think to think about the fact that her father that isn’t there to celebrate.

*

_“Your dad did whatever your dad did, not because of anything you did, or because of anything you are.”_

There was a time, more like years, when Rae was silently envious of her little sister. Being doted upon by not just Karim, but Finn, too. She’d never admit it, never reveal the petty and childish part of her that was so spiteful and small. But after years of witnessing how loved Jazz is, and, truly, how she is, too, she realizes that she wouldn’t be able to appreciate how wonderful Karim and Finn are, these quiet, kind, special men, if she hadn’t been neglected by her own father. She would have have taken them for granted, if she hadn’t experienced an absence that made their presence so extraordinary.

She’s learned that thinking about the past won’t change anything but her own perception about it. She’s come around and turned so many corners. Sometimes four in a row and she ended up back where she was for awhile, but she thinks more and more about that day, half a lifetime ago, when she stood in her therapist’s apartment, and he told her she was a terrific person. She thinks about what he gave her, what Karim has given her, and less and less about what her father didn’t.

* * *

_I guess I told you all that to tell you all this_

It’s a little ridiculous, the timing, but she holds the envelope to her chest and squeezes her eyes shut. She can keep a secret for three days, and it will be perfect, almost unbelievably so. She tucks the paper into her purse and tries to breath normally.

Sunday morning, June 19th. She gets up early, slips out of bed, leaves Finn dozing in the early summer light that is seeping through the sheer curtains at their bedroom window. She pauses in the doorway and looks back at him, an impossible fondness welling up inside of her. They’ve almost been together for more than half her life, and though there are days and weeks and months when she’s taken his presence as a given, she sometimes catches herself and makes herself be grateful. Because not everyone is as lucky; not everyone is as happy as she has become. It takes work, so much hard work. Her happiness isn’t free or simple. It’s complicated and takes untold effort, but she chooses it again and again. Because that’s the sort of effort she wants to spend. It’s an effort to be a sad mess, and it’s an effort to be a happy one. So she might as well be as happy as she can.

These are her thoughts as she makes breakfast. A frittata, with just the right amount of salt and pepper, perfected over years of making Sunday breakfasts. She takes the fruit salad out of the fridge, and winces as the electric kettle starts to boil, hoping it’s not loud enough to wake him.

Her mind drifts again, through the past few years of trials and errors. Finn’s always been everyone’s favorite uncle, the one Jazz hugs first, the one Chop and Izzy’s brood tackle as soon as he walks in the door, dragging him off to play their latest game.

For a long time, they hadn’t been trying at all. Rae was on the pill, as much to regulate her period as anything, but she wasn’t sure she wanted kids, and Finn never pressured her. When they were in their 20’s, he didn’t seem to want kids, either.

She’s just tucked the letter under his plate when he appears in the door, in a t-shirt and boxers, rubbing the sleep out of one eye with the heel of his hand. “Mornin’,” he mumbles.

“Morning!” she chirps back, too chirpily. She sees his eyes narrow as she darts away from the table, and she quickly asks him if he’s ready for tea in an attempt to distract him.

“I’m _always_ ready for tea,” he grumbles.

She hands him a steaming mug and he takes a whiff and exhales a satisfied sigh before taking a sip. “That’s the stuff.” He settles at his usual place and gives Rae a sleepy smile. “Thanks for makin’ brekkie, babe.”

“You’re welcome; eggs are just about ready to come out the oven.” She glances at his plate out of the corner of her eye, wondering when he’ll notice. He’s too engrossed in his tea, and trying to surreptitiously scratch his bum.

“Oh, I forgot the forks!” she says, pointedly looking next to his plate, but he blinks sleepily and drifts over to the cutlery drawer, sliding it open to take out two forks.

“We need anythin’ else?” he asks around a yawn.

“No, that’s all,” she sighs. She knows he’ll see it in a minute, but it’s the anticipation. She thinks she knows how he’ll react, but it’s all torturous supposition until he actually picks the bloody thing up and reads it. She clears her throat, though she can’t speak. It’s a preamble to an ironically pregnant silence.

She pulls on an oven glove and takes the frittata out, setting on the cooktop for a moment. She locks her elbows, leaning forward against the edge of the formica counter. She focuses on the spice containers stuck on the magnet board she bought but never hung, just leaned it against the wall next to the stove. Each one has a clear top, and she notices they’re nearly out of thyme. She chuckles at the homonym. Punny, she thinks.

She has just managed to get her mind off the topic at hand when Finn’s voice, half an octave too high, asks, “What’s this?”

Whipping around, she sees him holding the letter, eyes wide, shoulders visibly stiff. She raises her eyebrows in mock innocence. “Huh!” she says. “I dunno. What does it say?”

Finn doesn’t read it out loud; his eyes just scan the page furiously. “Are you—when did we get this?”

She looks down and purses her lips to one side. “Thursday.”

“THURSDAY?”

“If we’d gotten it any earlier, I would’ve told you … earlier, but I just thought, with today being … y’know.”

“What?” Finn asks, too het up to know what today is.

“Father’s Day.”

Finn stares at Rae for a long moment, then back at the paper, then stands up and crosses the kitchen in three big strides to envelop Rae in an intense embrace. He’s hugging her so hard, she can’t hug back, just uselessly pats at his lower back with her oven-gloved hand.

He kisses the side of her neck through a tangle of hair, and Rae can feel his hot tears when he buries his head in the crook of her neck.

They’d been approved. After a year and a half of filling out forms and being evaluated by a half a dozen social workers and having their flat inspected, they were deemed suitable. They’d thought about fostering, but secretly, Rae knew Finn couldn’t handle if the child went back to their parents. Neither could she, if she were really honest. So, they went straight for the adoption option, when it was clear that biology wasn’t working out.

Rae’s crying now, too. They’re standing on yet another edge. She’s leapt off so many cliffs with this man, and every time they’ve come out okay. Sometimes a little bruised, sometimes a lot, but nothing that couldn’t heal. This is a big one, but she’s ready. The more you jump, the better you get at it.

Finn pulls back and catches her mouth with his for a long, lingering kiss.

“Can I call me da?” he asks when he lets her go, breathless.

“‘Course ya can! I haven’t told anyone, either. I’ve gotta tell me mum, and Karim, of course.”

Each pull out their mobiles and smile at each other while they dial and listen for someone to answer. “Oh, hey, Dad!” Finn’s dad answers first, and he wanders into the bedroom with a wave at Rae.

When a voice answers Rae’s call, it’s deep, with a trace of an accent. She takes a deep breath.

“Hi, Karim? Happy Father’s Day! Listen, we’ve got some news …”


End file.
